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Comment by spdy | Hacker News Reader

Just out of curiosity how hard would it be to re-fit such a foundary to modern <5nm cpu fabs with ASML/Zeiss directly around the corner.

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Literally impossible.

You don't re-fit a fab, you build it from scratch. There is very little technological overlap where it matters due to the shift to EUV. You'd essentially have to scrap >75% of the fab to fit in the new equipment.

Not only that, but the fab undergoing the 2 - 5 year refit would also not be in full production capability. So there is the revenue loss in addition to everything else. and suddenly just building new makes even more sense.

Not everything needs cutting edge chips.

Heck, I can use crappy chips for every home appliance and home IOT device.

Sure I want high end stuff for my laptop so I can do AI, but that is just 1 application.

Yep. If you spend 5 years building a fab, then it will definitely be run on maximum utilization for as long as possible.

Things like microcontrollers thrive on the 180nm to 28nm nodes.

And even 74HC series logic chips are still being manufactured by Texas Instruments and Nexperia (former NXP/Philips). All fab capacity gets used.

There is a YouTube channel called asianometry which did some videos about UV lithography. Form what I remember the processes vary significantly in each generation so that there probably is little to no real overlap.

I'm no expert though so might be off by a mile here.

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